GE to move energy jobs to U.K.

By Alexander Soule

Published 5:56 pm, Thursday, September 24, 2015

Photo: VINCENT KESSLER / REUTERS

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In this file photo, General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt (R) chats with employees during a visit at the gas turbines production unit of the GE plant in Belfort, France. Immelt is striking deals with foreign governments to move jobs out of the U.S. in exchange for export financing after Congress voted to discontinue funding for the U.S. Export-Import Bank. less

In this file photo, General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt (R) chats with employees during a visit at the gas turbines production unit of the GE plant in Belfort, France. Immelt is striking deals with ... more

Photo: VINCENT KESSLER / REUTERS

GE to move energy jobs to U.K.

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For the third time this month, General Electric reached a deal with a foreign government to move jobs there in exchange for export financing, intensifying its pressure on Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States which was shut down in July.

On Thursday, Fairfield-based GE said it would create up to 1,000 energy sector jobs in the United Kingdom in exchange for as much as $12 billion in financing from UK Export Finance. That announcement came on the heels of a GE vow to create as many as 500 jobs in France, China and Hungary for gas turbine production that is currently handled in New York, Maine and other states; and 500 to 1,000 jobs in Europe for its GE Aviation operations, which has plants in Ohio and Massachusetts.

GE separately has put pressure on the state of Connecticut by publicly conducting a search for a new headquarters outside the state, even as it sells off its GE Capital division in Norwalk to bidders located elsewhere. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported GE reached a deal to sell its private equity investment arm to Ardian, which would add more than $1 billion to its own $50 billion portfolio.

GE says its oil and gas division exported $1.3 billion goods and services to 54 countries last year. GE is in the process of acquiring France-based Alstom, a major worldwide exporter of power and utility systems that has some 1,400 employees in Windsor, according to the Hartford Business Journal.

“We have initiated restructurings and plant consolidations in 2014 that are going to roll out late this year and next year,” Mark Begor, president of GE Energy Management, said Sept. 10 at an investment conference sponsored by RBC Capital Markets. “We already see a line of sight north of $100 million of cost benefits in 2016 that are really going to be implemented through the plant consolidations and other cost actions that we are taking; and we've got more of those that we are going to implement in 2017 and 2018.”